Friday, January 20, 2017

THE HAMBURGLAR

Opening this weekend:

The Founder—Near the beginning of this chronicle history of
the McDonald’s empire, we get a look at the hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California
that started the chain. It’s 1954, and a long line of customers are waiting for
a burger, fries and a Coke. We’re seeing it through the eyes of Ray Kroc
(Michael Keaton), the underachieving Midwestern milk-shake machine salesman
who’s visited hundreds of dreary drive-ins, diners and dives and knows he’s
stumbled on to something big here.

Some might see this scene as the thrilling origin of a great
American success story. Others might see it as the chilling start of a sci-fi
horror film, like the moment that the zombies or the alien pods start to spread
soulless conformity—Invasion of the
Franchise People.

It’s both, of course. For better and worse, this is no minor
episode in the history of America, or indeed of the developed world—as a friend
of mine noted recently, it’s unlikely that most of us have ever met anybody who
has never in their life eaten at McDonald’s. The makers of The Founder know this, and they go about their business with breezy
speed and humor but, quite rightly, without irony.

Kroc, a hustler who’s never found quite the right hustle,
talks his way into a job franchising the chain on behalf of the brothers
Maurice “Mac” McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman),
New Hampshire natives who had gone west in search of fortune. According to The Founder, the genial, conciliatory
Mac and the quiet, wary purist Dick were just trying to run a good quality,
profitable burger joint, but with the system he had designed—limited menu,
choreographically precise preparation, ridiculously rapid service—Dick had
essentially invented fast food.

The film tells how Kroc turned this concept into a third
locus for American communities, alongside the city hall and the church—Keaton
gets a ripe speech describing Kroc’s vision of the Golden Arches taking their
place alongside the flag and the Cross in towns throughout America. Within a
few years, he’s on his way to realizing this, and he’s also at war with Mac and
Dick, who are still in control of the brand and slow to approve any of Kroc’s
innovations.

The director is John Lee Hancock of The Rookie and The Blind Side,
working from a script by Robert D. Siegel, the former Onion writer who scripted The
Wrestler. There are lines and moments that hit a sour note in terms of
period—the phrase “family friendly” somehow didn’t sound like 1954 to me, for
instance. But I liked how conflicted Hancock and Siegel seem about their
protagonist, an admirable entrepreneur and a selfish, hubristic S.O.B. at the
same time. About midpoint, Kroc, who’s not too happily married, falls in love
at first sight with the wife (Linda Cardellini) of a man with whom he’s doing
business. The tension between the Norman Rockwell wholesomeness of Hancock’s
style and the complex and unsavory sexual and economic subtext makes the scene
really uncomfortable—and really interesting.

It’s doubtful that any of this could have anywhere near the
same charge without Michael Keaton. He deploys his usual manic star persona,
the jumpy guy who turns his bouncing-off-the-walls patter into a constant,
disarming self-parody. But here he shades it to a character that’s not altogether
likable, and he’s no less vibrant and riveting for that.

Paterson—The
title is the name of the setting—Paterson,
New Jersey, home of, among other
notables, the great modernist poet William Carlos Williams. It’s also the name
of the hero (Adam Driver), who works there as a city bus driver and is also a
poet—a contentedly unknown bard, jotting carefully-turned lines in the driver’s
seat before his shift starts. As he composes, his verses (actually written by
Ron Padgett) appear onscreen.

Jim Jarmusch’s idyll traces a week of this fellow’s pleasant
routines—waking up in the mornings next to his gorgeous wife (Golshifteh
Farahani), walking their jealous bulldog in the evenings, hanging out in a
local bar. He witnesses a bit of minor drama here and there in the course of
the week, and responds to it perfectly, and he himself suffers one painful but
entirely survivable disaster.

As usual with Jarmusch, the hipster pose and the comic
stoicism of the style help the whimsical sentiment to go down more easily. The
movie is suspiciously rose-colored in its view of the heartsease of an unknown
artist with a working life. Paterson (the guy, not the town) doesn’t require
literary fame, because he’s vanity-free, and every other benefit that fame
might bring to a person of moderate habits—comfort, stability, a beautiful and
adoring lover—he already has.

It seems, in short, a lot like a famous person’s daydream of
happy creative anonymity. But it’s such a serene and lovely daydream, and
Driver is so sweet, that you’re likely to be drawn in.

When Paterson and his dizzy, cuddly wife go out to the
movies, it’s to a revival showing of the 1932 masterpiece
Island of Lost Souls, and as they leave, Paterson notes—very
accurately—that his wife resembles the Panther Girl (Kathleen Burke) from that
film. Who wouldn’t want some version of this guy’s life?

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My work has appeared in publications ranging from the New Times weeklies (where I was a staff writer for several years) to USA Today, from Phoenix Magazine and Wrangler News and the East Valley Tribune to the Erie Times-News, Seattle Times and Detroit Metro Times to Rewind Magazine.

I'm that rare example of a living poet who has had a sonnet published in Weird Tales, and my poems have also appeared in Elysian Fields Quarterly.

I've acted in theatre productions in six states and the District of Columbia, and appear for about six seconds as an extra (a prison guard) in the John Waters film Cry-Baby.

I directed Shakespeare's Measure for Measure at Southwest Shakespeare Festival, and a short film called Holding Back the Dawn, based on a short story by my friend Barry Graham.

I was host of Another Saturday Night, a pop culture and film review show on KTAR radio.

I have produced, directed and acted in radio plays for NPR, KTAR and the Sun Sounds Radio service.